Scanning Code for Viruses Is No Longer a Job for Humans

If the information security company Kaspersky Lab had to use humans to analyze all the malware it sees, it would need to hire 350,000 people—half of those living in Washington, DC, or almost the entire population of the city of Florence, Italy. Yet, they do the trick with just 3,300 employees—and those analysts only inspect a tiny fraction of the whole volume of code. It’s possible with the help of algorithms and machine learning. At Kaspersky and other antivirus and infosec companies, computers carry out many mundane tasks. They also make sensitive decisions, such as figuring out whether a chunk of ones and zeros is malicious or not in order to protect you from hackers. Every major infosec company relies on automation. They simply could not afford to do otherwise.…